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16.1 Confederate president Jefferson Davis also had emotional ties to Vicksburg. His family home, Brierfield plantation, was only twenty miles south of the town along a part of the river known as Davis Bend. He described Vicksburg as the “nail-head that held the South’s two halves together.”

16.2 The phrase referred to the Great Siege of Gibraltar during the American War of Independence. Though vastly outnumbered and outgunned, the besieged British forces on the Rock had defied a combined Spanish and French invasion fleet for three years and seven months, one of the longest sieges in history.

16.3 Grant apparently believed that “Jewish peddlers” were to blame for the army’s supply problems.

16.4 During the Crimean War, the 19th Regiment of Foot was sent to the evocatively named Calamity Bay, where it took part in the bungled fight against the Russians for the Alma Heights. Currie was brought down by a bullet that tore a large hole through his left foot. He was rescued from the field, conscious, and therefore able to prevent the regimental surgeon from amputating his foot. For several months Currie lay festering in the notorious Scutari hospital until he was rescued by his brother, who brought him home on a stretcher. Currie made it his mission to walk again. Through sheer force of will he dragged himself on crutches to his medal ceremony at Buckingham Palace on May 19, 1855. His ashen countenance so alarmed Queen Victoria that she asked to be kept informed of his recovery.

16.5 Lord Lyons naturally took heart from the Griswold, perhaps far too much. The ship was proof, he told Russell, that Americans liked to complain about Britain, but behind the posturing “there lies a deeper and more enduring feeling of good will and kindly affection, which will be a lasting bond of feeling between the two kindred nations.”

SEVENTEEN

“The Tinsel Has Worn Off”

Democrats versus Republicans—Burnside in the Virginia mud—Arrival of General Hooker—Mosby’s Raid—A crisis of conscience—Volunteering for the South—An encounter with Stonewall Jackson

Lincoln’s troubles made the Democrats bolder in their denunciation of Republican “fanaticism” for persisting with the war. “You have not conquered the South,” thundered Clement Vallandigham in the House on January 14, 1863. “You never will.”1 The Ohio congressman and leader of the Peace Democrats had been unseated by the Republicans in the congressional elections, and this was his farewell speech. Though far from being an Anglophile, Vallandigham was deliberately echoing the Earl of Chatham’s warning to the House of Commons during the American War of Independence: “My Lords, you cannot conquer America!” Although Vallandigham had been defeated in the violent and expensive contest, he was confident that his opposition to the war—and to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation—would win him the governorship of Ohio in ten months’ time. “Sir,” he concluded, “there is fifty-fold less of anti-slavery sentiment to-day in the West than there was two years ago; and if this war be continued, there will be still less a year hence.”17.1

Vallandigham’s “make peace now” speech was received by a public still trying to comprehend the staggering death toll from Fredericksburg, Chickasaw Bluffs, and Murfreesboro. Discontent with the war, wrote Lyons on February 10, “is undoubtedly increasing, and if we have no success before the Spring … it will be impossible to keep up the numbers of the Army.”17.2 One hundred and thirty regiments were about to reach the end of their term of enlistment, George Herbert’s among them. “I am waiting as impatiently as you can for 4th of May,” he wrote to his mother. Like most of his comrades, he had no intention of reenlisting: “The tinsel has worn off the thing,” he admitted.2 Congress, aware that it faced a potentially crippling manpower shortage, was preparing a bill for a national draft.

The recent spate of defeats was not the only reason for the lack of enthusiasm for volunteering. The War Department’s mishandling of wounded